by Simon Cox
Immediately the police believed this account – helpfully it explained why they had failed in all of their previous efforts searching the dreary lava fields. The day after making this statement, Saevar was taken to the Raudholar by the police. When they arrived at the rocky track that lead to the hills, they asked Saevar to point out where the body was buried. Suddenly his certainty from the day before started to recede as he was confronted with the reality of his statement. He said it was late at night when he had done this, years before, and it looked very different. He pointed to several places among the mounds which looked likely burial places.
The next day Erla was brought to the crusted, red mounds. It was a place she knew well from her childhood and she pointed out a spot which was 50 metres from the site Saevar had picked out. Erla was seen as a helpful witness, so the police dug in the area, but with no success. Kristjan was the last of the trio brought there and came up with a different location from Saevar’s and Erla’s, but it was close enough for the police to be convinced this was indeed the place where, among the burnished earth and rocks, they would find the burnt and desiccated remains of Geirfinnur Einarsson.
With two weeks to go until Christmas, there was an intense search in the water-filled craters of the Raudholar. The police brought a bulldozer to try to get under the stones, but despite all their scrabbling and scratching at the earth, it came up with nothing.
As well as physically searching the site, Schutz thought he could use his experience of more sophisticated investigative techniques to uncover the burial location. He ordered a comparison of the aerial surveys of the area between 1974 and 1975 to see if there had been any displacement of the stones. The Raudholar had been protected since the 1950s, after the Government had plundered the rock for use in the construction of the airport. Since then, people hadn’t been allowed to remove even the stray shards of ochre coloured rock that lay around the hills, so any major disturbance would be noted on the photographs. And yet the examination of these images could find no discernible difference.
Christmas 1976 would mark a year of the suspects’ time in custody, and there was a flurry of press activity. Having been tight lipped for so long, the police were feeling more confident. They revealed some more damning and prejudicial leaks about the case. Dagbladid ran the headline, ‘Geirfinnur: the final stage’. It explained why the police hadn’t found the bodies, as they believed that they had been moved at least once since the prisoners had been arrested. It wasn’t clear who had done this and there was no evidence that the bodies had been moved in the past year. For the police it was a convenient way of explaining why the task force, under the guidance of super cop Karl Schutz, and after a year of interrogating the suspects, had spectacularly failed to find even one of the corpses. They also continued with the fiction that Erla’s confession in which she said she had shot Geirfinnur ‘was essentially right’.
Erla dreaded the court hearings, when they would decide the length of her remand and how much longer she would be kept away from her daughter. The last time she was here in September she had been remanded for 90 days by Orn Hoskuldsson. When this happened, Erla had lost control: ‘I am never going get out of here,’ she told him. ‘How can you do this to me?’ Orn made her a promise: ‘You will be out of here before this year is over.’ It’s not clear why he set this arbitrary deadline; the only logical explanation was that he already knew that this was when Karl Schutz wanted the case wrapped up. Yet here she was on 22 December, back in court again. This time she was brought before Hallvardur Einvardsson, the deputy prosecutor.
Erla was then taken to Orn Hoskuldsson, the investigating magistrate who had the strange dual role of running the inquiry but also being the magistrate who would decide on the length of the suspects’ remand. He ordered everyone else out of the room so he could be alone with her. Erla had never taken seriously Orn’s promise that he would release her before the end of the year. She saw it as another lie, a way to calm her down and control her anxiety. But as soon as they were alone Orn surprised her. ‘I made you a promise,’ he said, ‘and I intend to keep it, I’m going to let you go.’ Erla was overwhelmed and started crying, overjoyed that she would be reunited with her daughter.
What had motivated him to keep his word and release Erla at this stage, before the investigation was formally finished? Was it guilt, regret at how she had been treated by the investigators? Erla said during the months of interrogations when she still felt some empathy for them, ‘I know this sounds strange but these were the only people I ever spoke to. A lot of the time they were very friendly. I was in such a desperate need for human contact they were never the monsters – just guys I knew well. They spoke about their families. It wasn’t till afterwards I wished I could see them die.’
Erla’s release came with conditions: she would have to show up twice a week at the district court, stay within the jurisdiction of Reykjavik and be kept under police surveillance.
Being free was a mixed blessing for her. She no longer had to breathe in the fetid air in Sidumuli or hear Saevar clanking past in his leg irons, or fear the police and guards. But Reykjavik is a tiny place where it’s impossible to be invisible. When she was outside she could tell that people now saw her as ‘the scum of the earth… people would go out of their way to spit on me in public’.
Erla’s release added to the anguish of the other inmates; it brought home the fact that they wouldn’t be freed until the case was solved and they were found guilty. This was gnawing away at Kristjan. His bizarre admission in early December of involvement in a third murder was a warning sign that his mental health was plummeting. On Christmas Eve it all became too much for him and he slit his wrists. The guards found him before it was too late and he was transferred to the old prison, the Hegningarhusid, where they could keep a closer eye on him. The move did little to ease Kristjan’s anxiety. He tried to kill himself again early in January, this time setting fire to his mattress before slashing his wrists again. He was taken to hospital and treated for his wounds, but it was a second lucky escape. When he was searched, the guards found a razor blade and a broken mirror. There would now be a round-the-clock watch on him to make sure he couldn’t try for a third time.
Gudjon felt the lure of this too. Drugged up on sedatives, for weeks he too actively considered taking his life. Initially he was only sleeping three hours a night, and in those other 21 hours he wrote in his diary ‘I’m always thinking about suicide’ or that he ought ‘to say farewell to this nonsense once and for all’. His mother would regularly bring supplies for him and inside one of the boxes he noticed there was a razor blade. He thought this was the opportunity he needed: ‘I could have done it with a short cut, and no one could have done anything.’
But, never one to rush into anything, Gudjon read books on the subject of suicide; he even got a book about it from the prison chaplain, Jon Bjarman. It was his religious faith that saved him. Gudjon wasn’t going to rush into this. He had his wife, children and mother to think of and he thought about the added pain and suffering he would inflict upon them. Gudjon believed in the end what stopped him was what he called ‘a simple thing’ – the belief that your life is ‘not your property, it’s not at your disposal. You are not free to get rid of it, it’s given to you it’s a gift. It’s all wrong to think you can take it away yourself, you’re not allowed.’
He would confide in Jon Bjarman, who would flash his gap-toothed smile on his regular visits to the cells in Sidumuli. He was the one person that Gudjon and the other suspects could trust. In the year they had been in custody, the chaplain had listened to all of the suspects’ woes and anxieties. Bjarman also served a useful purpose for the police: he was a trustworthy figure who the suspects could confide in and hopefully that would carry through to the interrogations.
For Lutherans, Bjarman was the real deal, someone who could hear confessions and had a hotline to God to grant absolution. During the course of his visits he had become increasingly concerned about the treatment
of the suspects, the deprivation they were enduring and the torture meted out to Saevar. His plea for more compassionate treatment had been ignored. This was clearly a challenge to the authority of the police and the court. But Bjarman didn’t fear them, he answered to the church and God.
The chaplain could see Gudjon was buckling under the strain. Through their conversations, Bjarman had developed strong reservations that Gudjon was guilty. He made this clear to Gudjon: ‘He said you should not confess anything but after that he was not allowed to visit for a long time, maybe they had listening devices in the cell to hear what he said.’ It was too late for this now anyway, Gudjon had already confessed. As the year came to a close, however, there would a dramatic intervention that would call his confession into question.
Gisli Gudjonsson had returned to his psychology studies, attending a university in Britain, and was spending his Christmas holiday in Iceland. On Christmas Eve the police called on the former detective for a favour: the detectives were short of staff, as the older officers wanted to be with their families, would he collect Gudjon’s wife Rita and drive her to Sidumuli? The visit was designed to be a way to put further pressure on Gudjon to tell them everything he knew.
Gisli and Gretar sat in as the couple talked. Rita encouraged Gudjon to confess everything, but he had already, he didn’t know what else to say. As she told him about the family and the world outside and gave him gifts she had brought from home, he wept. He had cried a lot in the past six weeks.
Days later, Gisli would be asked to perform a much bigger favour. As part of his studies in the summer of 1976 he had conducted research on lie detectors and had brought a polygraph machine back to Iceland. It created huge interest in the country; there was even an article about it in Morgunbladid. Gisli found there was no shortage of volunteers who wanted to take part, even the prison officers themselves. He tested the machine on a dozen prison inmates. ‘I was getting nine out of ten detecting lies, it gave the [false] impression the test was infallible. Everybody had the belief that I was dealing with a magical test.’ But the truth was that Gisli was still learning how to interpret the tests.
As part of this research, Gisli had conducted a lie detector test on Saevar. He hooked up the electrodes to Saevar’s palms and temple and interviewed him about the case. This was part of Gisli’s thesis and not part of the investigation. There was later intense speculation about what the test had revealed, but Gisli wouldn’t release it to the police because it was inconclusive and was part of his research. The general view among the police was that it provided concrete evidence Saevar was guilty. ‘It created a frenzy,’ Gisli remembered, ‘I got caught up in it. It was never meant to be used in the cases, I didn’t have the experience. I was a student.’
Now one of the detectives remembered Gisli’s earlier trip with the polygraph machine and asked him to conduct a test on Gudjon. ‘They thought giving him a lie detector test might bring him to his senses and help him remember,’ Gisli said. ‘They thought he would be very open and bring back his memory and he might tell them where the body was.’ Gisli was willing to try as he thought Gudjon would be a fascinating subject. But there was a problem, he didn’t have the equipment he had brought over in the summer. He would have to improvise. He decided to record Gudjon’s answers and then send the interview off to a psychologist in England for voice stress analysis.
It was lunchtime on the last day of the year when Gudjon was brought to the court offices. Outside, Reykjavik was gearing up to celebrate the New Year. In the evening, families would gather for a big meal, sharing stories, excited about the evening ahead. Then it would be out to the local bonfire, huddling as close as possible to the dancing flames to keep out the cold. At midnight fireworks would explode and light up the tar black night.
Gudjon would only be able to hear this; he had no idea when he would ever see such a sight again. He had given his permission for the polygraph test after a visit from Gisli. He had written about this in his diary days earlier. He said Gisli Gudjonsson had asked if he was willing to have a lie detector test. ‘I asked for precedents but there are none.’ Gudjon wanted to discuss it with his lawyer, but he couldn’t until the next day so ‘I gave my consent. This relates to the police not believing in my innocence, they think I am covering up. I have no problem with this being investigated with the newest technology.’
When Gisli entered the room for the test, he recalled how Gudjon looked broken: ‘It was my impression he was rather defeated, he had given up.’ Gisli thought it was clear from Gudjon’s quietly spoken demeanour ‘He was thinking he was guilty, he had a defeatist attitude, he was passive, there was a general acceptance of his predicament, he was not fighting.’ Over the next hour they went through 22 questions. When they finished, Gisli went back over them a second time. When Gisli had asked the question, ‘Do you know who was behind the disappearance of Geirfinnur?’ Gudjon had at first answered, ‘Yes’. The second time, however, he paused and said, ‘No’. Gisli was surprised – why would he admit to knowing something and then deny it? Gisli could see that there was a discrepancy, but at the time he didn’t think a great deal about it.
Initially, Gudjon also felt the polygraph test had changed very little, ‘I just said thank you and went out and I never heard anything else.’ He felt it was strange, having a student conduct a test on him. ‘Schutz was in charge,’ he recalled, ‘he didn’t want any kids like Gisli Gudjonsson roaming around the offices.’ But Schutz was away in Germany on his Christmas break. Soon, though, the test started to sow the seeds of doubt in Gudjon’s mind. The entry in his diary from that day is by a man in despair:
After a lot of crying, I feel better, but I am still miserable. The lie detector test took place today but I feel like I made some mistakes. The recent interrogations have affected my nerves… I’m breaking down and hardly know my name with any certainty. I wish God would take me to him. I am about to give up. Where are these bodies? How should I know? I have a headache. Feel terrible.
By now, he had developed a routine to help him cope with the solitary confinement: ‘I would sleep until 12, have food then I would do my diary.’ The afternoon was a similar pattern: ‘Some reading and more sleep until coffee about four, then more reading and sleep until seven.’ After this, he would have medicine followed by tea or coffee. ‘I relaxed completely in my bed and did not move a muscle for a long time – I’d just lie down with my eyes closed.’
The lie detector test seemed to have sparked some last vestige of doubt in his mind that he was involved. When he saw his lawyer soon after, he requested the statements he had given so that he could read them again. He wanted to see exactly what he had been saying to detectives and how far he had gone. He also started to read back over his diary.
It was late, after midnight, when the city had stilled; the only sounds were the low hum of the wind and the constant ebb and flow of the water lapping at the rocks. He wrote that the situation could not get any worse and he even thought it might be getting a bit better. He wondered what it would be like to be held for hundreds of days in prison.
After weeks of compliance, Gudjon now felt increasingly uncertain that he had indeed taken part in Geirfinnur’s killing. His diary is filled with these creeping doubts and his poor mental condition is clear. ‘Well-meaning people say: “no problem, just tell the truth”. Yes, it’s now just that. This brings the old question. What is truth?’ He wasn’t helped by growing insomnia which darkened his mood. On 2 January, he wrote:
I find myself involved in an incredible web of lies; I never see a clear sky. There is something really wrong about the case, particularly the fact that I can’t remember anything. Amnesia seems strange to me, this has never happened to me sober, to remember nothing.
There was one thing that was becoming clearer, though. He wrote, ‘I never went to Keflavik 19/11/74.’
17
January–February 1977
At the task force’s offices at Borgutun 7, Schutz had returned and was confro
nted with a big problem. The detectives told him about a marked change in Gudjon. The prisoner was no longer co-operating and had started to doubt his involvement. Before he left for his Christmas break, Schutz was sure that he had cracked Gudjon; something must have changed to bring about this. When he heard about the lie detector test he was furious.
Gisli Gudjonsson had returned to England and his studies when he became aware of Karl Schutz’s anger. Gisli found out that after the lie detector test Gudjon had changed, ‘He became very ambivalent. He became concerned that perhaps he was not remembering things correctly. He became concerned that perhaps he hadn’t been involved and he was innocent.’
